The New Monogamy | Tammy Nelson | TEDxBucharest

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] if you've ever been in a relationship you know relationships are hard that's true for everyone it's not so much committing to another person but staying true to someone else that seems to be a challenge for all of us social monogamy the roommate part of your relationship what my husband calls the hangout ability the companionship that's hard divorce rates are really high but it's the sexual monogamy that is really tough 25 to 60 percent of everyone will cheat at some point in their marriage I know that that's a really wide range first of all 25 to 60 percent and it's really hard to get infidelity statistics because affairs are based on dishonesty so people lie to the researchers men brag about their affairs and women minimize their infidelity so we don't even know if we can trust this the statistics so what do we trust I can tell you what we do know it used to be a lot easier to be married like 200 years ago we were only living to be about 38 years old and so you were married for an average of 15 years you can live with anyone for 15 years by the time you got bored you were dead and so now we're expected to live with someone for 20 30 40 50 60 sometimes 70 years back then it was a business transaction you got married to have children to help on the farm to pass down your sheep today we don't even need to get married you don't need to get married to have sex you don't need to get married to have children you don't need to get married to get a mortgage or even to get health or life insurance marriage and monogamy are optional and they're not an easy choice less people than ever before are married and we get married later than ever before and 98% of everyone has fantasies of someone other than their partner that means pretty much everyone except for my husband so I did some research of my own to try to figure out this whole relationship thing and why it's so hard I went on a website called Ashley Madison some of you seem to know that Ashley Madison is a dating site for married people to meet other married people in order to have an affair I 4 million members worldwide it's quite popular so I didn't want to meet someone and go out with anyone I didn't want to talk to anyone I wanted to observe sort of like looking into the fishbowl but not swimming with the fish so I set up two profiles one is a man looking for a woman and one is a woman looking for a man all I did was say that my name was Tom and I was tall and as a woman I said my name was Terry and I was blonde I didn't put up any pictures or any identifying information and within 24 hours as Terry the woman I got all these responses from men they sent me photographs of holding fishing poles or climbing mountains or walking their dog but what was interesting was that they all wanted a long-term affair partner they weren't going to leave their wife but they didn't want casual sex they actually wanted an emotional relationship they wanted someone to talk to they wanted to get to know me and they didn't want something short term which I thought was interesting now when I was Tom I got all these pictures from women and they were all cleavage shots pictures of the women in lingerie and bikinis and they said something really interesting too they said they just wanted sex they wanted to meet me after they put the kids on the school bus they didn't want to know about my problems at work or my problems with my marriage they said you have a wife for that and so they just wanted a casual relationship and they didn't want a long-term connection I thought this was really interesting considering that I am a sex and couples therapist and a researcher this goes against the things that we assume about men and women yes men want sex but they also want emotional relationships and women want partners but they also want non-committed hot sex so is this why monogamy is so hard because we all want both or is monogamy so hard because this is the first time in history that you can cheat on your partner lying in bed next to them on your handheld device you know maybe we don't even know how to define monogamy anymore what is cheating is it texting your ex on social media is it masturbating to pornography is it talking to your work spouse who you spend more time with than you do your spouse at home you know how do we even know what cheating means anymore what about the future what about when you have that robot at home when you come home and they have Alexa and Siri in their brain and they know exactly how your meeting was at work today and they say how was your day dear and they know what you like for dinner and they say can i order you some food and by the way what kind of sex would you like tonight so is it gonna be cheating if you have sex with a robot how are we gonna define monogamy then you know today the way that we agree on our monogamy is by this explicit monogamy agreement this vow that we say out loud this one-time promise that we make to our partner that's supposed to last the lifetime of our marriage or of our relationship that's like saying I told you I loved you when I married you and I'll let you know if I change my mind so maybe those private implicit assumptions that you have about your monogamy not the explicit promise but the implicit assumption you have about your about your monogamy they might be different than what your partner thinks they might be micro cheating behaviors that could lead to something bigger so when you talk to that person on Facebook or when you have an email that you send to someone that you don't tell your partner is that considered cheating is that friendship you have at work really an emotional affair and how do you decide what are the implicit assumptions that you have about your relationship well I can tell you that one thing that you you probably all assume is that you're gonna stay sexual well into your 80s and 90s you know with viagra and levitra and psy Alice and now with really good hip replacements we all assume that we're gonna stay sexy and healthy well into our old age and why shouldn't we if we have the capacity to do that but that implicit assumption means that we're gonna stay sexy forever and how do you stay sexy a lot of people cheat in order to stay sexual in order to stay in their marriage and therefore affairs aren't really a dilemma of sex they're a dilemma of integrity because how do you keep your promise to yourself and to that other person you care about you know I really believe that we are in a crisis of integrity right now how do we honor ourselves and honor that other person I don't think we wake up in the morning and go how are we gonna hurt our partner today but we are always going to be loyal to ourselves more than we're gonna be faithful to another person particularly for over half a century monogamy somehow has become synonymous with this idea of integrity if that's true that we're gonna fail over half the time so I would like to suggest that perhaps integrity means being honest about what you really want and who you really are and what your values are and if that's the case you could have a relationship that means something to you and is a commitment to the partner that you're with so I'm gonna tell you three ways to do that to create a relationship that works for you and a relationship where you can stay true to yourself number one you create a new monogamy agreement why are we going on this traditional monogamy agreement that was based on marriage 200 years ago and why aren't we renewing it every couple years I mean you renew your drivers license every couple of years why aren't you renewing your monogamy have a conversation I don't care what it's about I'm not the judge of your relationship or your monogamy you should be the judge of that you should have that conversation and talk about what it means to the two of you does it mean having relationships with other people whether it's at work or sexual relationships you determine that if you're honest is it a commitment that works for the two of you it's only up to the two of you to decide what truth and integrity and commitment means this is not your grandparents monogamy this is your monogamy and if that can be aligned between the two of you then you are living within integrity the second way to have a relationship that works create new rules but new rules around your technology what are your cyber boundaries are you going to share your passwords are you going to create emails where the two of you can read them together are you going to be transparent because today commitment means transparency so you decide how transparent transparent you want to be you know intimacy means into me see so do you want your partner to look at all of your social media how much do you want to compartmentalize and how much do you want to be open because today cyber integrity will determine your level of connection and the third way to have a relationship that works create a sex date once a week let's just say it's Thursday nights you meet every Thursday night with your partner you don't go out you don't eat rich food and drink wine no one has sex on those nights you meet you meet at home you light the candles you turn on the music and that becomes the time that you commit to your erotic life to the part of your relationship where you're not just companions you're more than that and that becomes sacred it's like yoga or meditation you're connected to each other in a way that's just about you and no it's not spontaneous everyone says it's not spontaneous I think you mean it's not impulsive but even when you were dating you knew when you were gonna see each other it wasn't spontaneous you shaved you took a shower you wore nice clothes it's sort of like if you have an affair you anticipate those stolen moments when you're going to see each other if you're married or you're in a committed partnership this is important anticipatory time makes your relationship special yes you can have sex on the on the other nights of the week but there's something sacred about this time together you know we work hard we have busy lives the likelihood of you coming home from a hard day at work and sweeping the dishes off the kitchen table and say oh my god take me now is hopefully unlikely but if you're gonna do it that's great just don't do it on Thursday night's Thursday nights are the time that you commit to one another it's a way of saying I and therefore you whether I have a headache or there's something better on TV I'm gonna show up now if you can do these things if you can commit to creating your own monogamy defining values that work for the two of you if you can create a technology agreement that works for you where you have cyber integrity you know I think your technology can work for you to bring you closer together and not divide you sometimes when my husband is upstairs in the house and I'm downstairs I'll text him and say hey what are you wearing you know it can work to make your relationship sexier and if you can create a sex date it is like giving your partner that message our relationship is the most important thing above everything else it's not just something to squeeze in when we have time and energy you know if you do those things you are giving each other the gift of the sacredness of a relationship Tennessee Williams said the opposite of death is desire it's reminding each other that your relationship is not anything that anyone else is telling you it should be it's what you decide it should be and in that way you're giving each other this gift you're giving it known to yourself you can choose something higher you know evolutionary scientists sometimes say that maybe we're not born as humans to be monogamous I would argue that theory we're not born knowing how to eat with a fork either but we can learn you can choose we have a prefrontal cortex we're humans with like a higher function to make decisions so you can decide whatever kind of relationship you want you can be socially monogamous you can be sexually monogamous or I even think there's a third choice where you can be in a sacred spiritual relationship that works for the two of you and I hope it's a sexy relationship especially on Thursday nights thank you [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 61,986

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Life, Behavior, Relationships

Id: 3JMioYaBJDc

Length: 15min 39sec (939 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 26 2019